1001 Cranes (20 page)

We finish folding more than a hundred cranes; they aren’t A-or even B-grade, but good enough. Now what? I think, and Mrs. O can read my mind. She goes into her purse again and finds a needle-and-thread kit, but the leftover thread is only about three inches long. She dumps all the contents of her purse onto an empty chair: wallet, about ten pens (all capped), toothbrush with a plastic cover, checkbook, cell phone, a couple of green tea bags, and finally, dental floss, mint-flavored. “Aha,” she says, picking up the dental floss dispenser. “This will work.”

She tells the two boys to open up the cranes, and I’m supposed to poke the middle of each one with the needle. One of the brothers is a little rough and pulls the wings too hard, tearing one of the magazine cranes. He looks like he’s going to cry, but I tell him it’s okay. “There’s plenty more.”

Mrs. O then takes each crane and threads them together with the dental floss. You can tell that she’s organized, because she doesn’t assemble them in just any old way, but creates a pattern, as if she is making a beaded necklace. Three gold ones, one yellow Post-it, two magazine ones. It makes me laugh to see a little man golfing on one of the wings.

Mrs. O makes three strands of cranes: two short ones for the two boys and a long one, which she hands to me after she threads the last crane.

Mom and Aunt Janet finally come to get me in the waiting room. “Gramps wants to see you,” my aunt says, and Mom tells Mrs. O that Gramps will have bypass surgery tomorrow.

Mrs. O puts all her junk back into her purse and waves goodbye to me. “I’ll see you back home,” she says, and leaves. I forget to say thank you, but figure she understands.

As we leave the waiting room, I see my grandmother turning the corner in the hallway and coming toward us. She stops in midstep when she sees me. She starts to say something but then keeps walking. I hear her sturdy sandals slap the linoleum with each step. Mom remains quiet for once. It’s Aunt Janet who says softly, “She’s still in shock.”

I walk into Gramps’s room by myself. Mom waits outside and says I shouldn’t stay long. I carry in the threaded origami cranes. I don’t know where to put them, and first start to wrap them around the plastic guardrail on one side of Gramps’s bed, but he shakes his head. “Those doctors and nurses will crush them. Hang them from that board over there so I can see them.” He’s talking about a small whiteboard on the wall. Someone has written his name, Nick Inui, and a few numbers beside it.

“Beautiful,” says Gramps. “Just what I needed.”

“Are you going to be all right, Gramps?” I ask. The room smells yucky, vinegary and like medicine. I would never want to eat anything in that room.

“They are going to operate on me tomorrow. It’ll take some time, but I’ll be like new.”

Grandma Michi walks in. “You better get some rest,” she tells Gramps.

“Yah, yah, don’t worry, don’t worry. Just need a little more time with An-jay.”

“You shouldn’t get worn out.” She keeps standing there. I know she means that I should leave, but I stay where I am. “Two more minutes,” she states before leaving.

“Do you know that you’re my hero?” Gramps says.

I wrinkle my forehead.

“That aspirin might have saved my life.”

I just did what the operator told me, I think. But I still feel warm and happy to be called Gramps’s hero.

“Grandma and I got into a fight,” I tell Gramps. “Back at the Buddhist church. I told her that she was a bad grandma.”

“Oh, I see.”

“I think she’s still mad at me.”

Gramps shakes his head. “She’s just worried about me. I’m all she has.”

“But there’s us,” I say, meaning me, my mom, and Aunt Janet. And even my dad.

“It’s just that she’s never had much of a family.”

I’m shocked that Gramps is saying this to me. Family is everything to Grandma Michi, Aunt Janet told me. It means crests and big parties, doesn’t it?

“Your grandma is afraid of being alone. She has a lot in common with you. She knows exactly how you feel, An-jay. She never had two parents living together.”

“What?”

“Her parents weren’t even married, ever. She grew up in an orphanage with other Japanese children.”

“In Japan?”

“No, here in Los Angeles. It was in a place called Silverlake. It was run by someone from Japan.”

I breathe in what Gramps has said. No wonder Grandma Michi knows so much about Japan; she probably learned it all in the orphanage. And no wonder she and Rachel Joseph have a special connection. “Do Mom and Aunt Janet know about this?”

Gramps shakes his head. “No. Just me and you know.” And Rachel Joseph, I think. “This can be our secret,” he adds.

“But why? Why does everything have to be a secret?” I’m sick of secrets and I’m sick of being the secret keeper. Grandma Michi is so old, anyway. What does it matter that my grandmother’s parents weren’t married and she lived in an orphanage?

“You don’t understand, An-jay. With some people, what other people think is almost more important than what they think of themselves.” Gramps takes a big breath and I wonder if his heart is starting to ache. “I’m not saying that it’s good or that it’s right. Some folks just like to keep quiet about their personal life.”

“It’s sure not the
hakujin
way.” Or the Christian way. I think back to the story of Jesus and the woman at the well.

“But it’s our way, your grandmother’s and mine. You need to find your own way, An-jay.”

“What am I going to do about Grandma? I don’t think she even wants to talk to me.”

“She loves you. You’re our only grandchild. Do you know how precious you are to us?”

My eyes get misty.

“She wants to know you, talk to you. But she doesn’t know how to do it with words.”

How can you talk to someone without words? I think.

“I’ll talk to her. But you’ll need to talk to her, too,” he says.

So much for silent ways, I think.

Silent Roosters

When Mom and I are driving home, she tries to stop by a sandwich shop near Tony’s uncle’s store, but I tell her that I’m not hungry. I don’t need any reminders about Tony right now.

After Mom parks the car in the empty driveway, we go into the house through the front door. It seems so lonely now. Yeah, the fireplace is still crowded with the
kokeshi
dolls and the roosters, but something seems to be missing. Even the masks by the front door seem wooden and lifeless.

Mom goes into her bedroom and closes the door. I hear her talking on her cell phone. I sit down on the couch and surf some television channels. Nothing seems to take my mind off Gramps and Grandma Michi.

After a while, Mom comes out and stands in front of me. In her right palm is the red cell phone. “I’ve decided to give this back to you,” she says. “I think somebody’s been trying to reach you.” She then goes into the kitchen, and I hear her opening cupboards and taking pans out. I look at the cell phone display. 5
MISSED CALLS
, it reads. They all are from Tony’s phone number; two of them were made today. I don’t feel like listening to his messages. I might feel differently tomorrow or the next day or the next, but I still erase the messages one by one. I can figure out what he’s going to say, and it really doesn’t matter, especially now.

I turn the phone off, zip it into my backpack, and watch more TV. After an hour, I reach underneath the couch cushions. I find Mom’s diary stuffed between them, and tear out the page my mother wrote about seeing some guy at a store.

I go to the first page after the diary title page and start to write. I begin from the time Mom and I were on our way down from Mill Valley to Gardena on Interstate 5. I write about my first days at my grandparents’ house this summer, Mr. and Mrs. O, even the cats that Grandma is not supposed to know about. I write about all the secrets people have told me. And finally, I write about how I feel and what I’m scared of.

What is real love—you know, the kind that’s supposed to last forever? I want the kind that I can hold on to tight, that won’t disappear. I didn’t think Tony would disappear, but he did. And I never thought Dad and Mom would get a divorce, but it looks like they might. How did Kawaguchi know that guy wasn’t for her?

I chew on the back of the pen for a while, and then keep going.

Nothing really seems to be the way it is supposed to be. But some things are actually a little better than they seem. Like how Gramps really, really cares about Grandma more than I ever realized. And how Grandma really, really cares about Gramps. They’re not all kissy-kissy, but I guess that’s only one part of it.

I write a few paragraphs more and then Mom calls me for dinner. She says that she doesn’t care if I’m not that hungry; I still need to eat. Before I go to the bathroom to wash my hands, I leave the diary in front of Grandma Michi’s door. I find a yellow Post-it and write on it
To Grandma. From Angela.
I then add
P.S. I’m sorry.

One City

Somebody’s knocking at the front door, and the clock next to the
kokeshi
dolls says it’s ten. Aunt Janet woke me up earlier this morning, but I obviously went back to sleep on the couch. I’m not sure who else is home, so I finally pull myself up and go to the front door in my bare feet. I open it, and there’s Dad.

He’s wearing jeans, a crumpled T-shirt, and sunglasses. I wish I had a pair of sunglasses, because the sun is bright.

“How is he?” he asks. I find out that Dad has been driving all morning.

“I think he’s in surgery now. I’ll get Mom,” I say, and turn, but he grabs me by the arm. “I want to talk to you first.”

We decide to take a walk and I don’t even bother to brush my teeth or comb my hair. I’m even still wearing my pajama bottoms, but Dad doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about what people look like on the outside.

“I heard that you practically saved Gramps’s life,” he says.

I’m surprised that the news has reached him. “I just did what the 911 operator told me to do,” I say.

“But you followed through. Following through is so important.” We walk underneath some smog trees and I can’t believe that I ever thought they were ugly. I love everything about Gardena right now—the floating hedges, the smell of salt water. “I guess I’ve really let you down,” Dad says.

I don’t try to make him feel better by saying
No, you haven’t.
I can’t let him get off that easily.

“How long has Mom known about Mrs. Papadakis?”

“A while,” he says, and I start feeling bad for my mother. Tony ripped my heart out, and he wasn’t even a boyfriend. I can’t imagine what it would have felt like if he had been someone really important, like my husband. “But I didn’t want to talk about me and your mother. This is about you and me.”

Dad says that he’s been doing some soul-searching and that he’s not going to be spending as much time with Mrs. Papadakis, but he explains that he’s not going to be moving back in with us, either. “I think I have to be on my own for a little while. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be seeing you. We’ll get together all the time.”

I nod, but I think, That is, if I stay in Mill Valley. I’m still not quite sure where home will be for me. Even if I go back to Mill Valley, it’s not going to feel the same. I have barely spoken to Emilie, and besides, I feel that I’ve changed so much this summer I’m not the same person anymore. I’m not sure who I am or if I like who I am. The parts of my brain and my heart that remember kissing Tony or folding the 1001 cranes will never disappear. And although some of it hurts, I wouldn’t give any of it back.